


The Butterfly People Effect

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Series: LAOFT Extras [82]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Antagonist Death, Elderly person having a stroke, Fairy Tale Curses, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Love and Other Fairytales AU, M/M, logan stages a forest-wide revolution basically is what that last tag is for, lowkey terrorism, magical compulsion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 22:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21346021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: Logan is a Spring – the earliest in all of Wickhills.The Unseelie Court is not afraid of Springs, early or not.(They should be.)Or,What if Logan figured out he was a Spring before the main storyline of Love and Other Fairytales?
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & The Dragon Witch, Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton, Logan Sanders & Original Characters, Logic | Logan Sanders & Thomas Sanders & The Dragon Witch, so many platonic relationships god damn
Series: LAOFT Extras [82]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1365505
Comments: 61
Kudos: 488





	The Butterfly People Effect

**Author's Note:**

> the first of what will probably be quite a few What-IF AU’s of my Love and Other Fairytales Verse (by popular demand, AKA I got possessed by this at fuck-off in the morning and it demanded to be written) 
> 
> Is it a little narcissistic to write a For Want Of A Nail fic about my own universe? Well, maybe, but who told you I wasn’t at least a little full of myself?
> 
> I listened to Echo by Talisk… pretty much on repeat while writing this, and I blame that for at least 50% of the possession. It’s the FIDDLE, yall
> 
> many thanks to my friend [@trivia-goddess](trivia-goddess.tumblr.com) for beta-reading literally the longest single installment of anything i’ve ever written, you are much stronger than me lol

Let’s tell a story.

No, not that one.

In that story, no one talked to the changeling son of the banshee. The Unseelie saw him and thought “Spring.”

They thought “The worst kind of Spring,”

They thought of snowmelt and cracking ice, of flowers that take root in freshly-unfrozen soil and pushpushpush into bloom no matter how the Winter clings. No matter that the Spring court had no power, these days – some things even fae cannot stop, and the turning of the seasons is one.

They did not fear him, yet, in either story.

And in that story, the Seelie looked at him and they thought _pet_. They saw the banshee, though he looked nothing like her – she was in his shadow, hovering at his shoulder with nails like claws in his skin and hair like a shroud they knew he would be buried in. He cannot beat her, they thought. He was one of them, but he belonged to her; he was already lost, and they all knew it.

They could not touch him. Some bridges were uncrossable.

In this one.

Maybe the full moon fell on a different day of the week, and he stayed just a few minutes longer. Maybe, the banshee struck him one too many times in view of one too many Seelie. Maybe she didn’t – maybe she never struck him at all, but they looked at him anyway. Maybe he shed a tear – of frustration, or sorrow, or hopeless resignation.

Or maybe he simply bore it, as stoic as he always was. But Seelie cast their eyes the same way they cast their magic – with their hearts. Some things are harder to hide from those kinds of eyes.

Small things. One, or many – the reason isn’t important.

In this story, a single pixie crossed the bridge, and landed in the changeling’s earth-brown hair.

“You may call me Aster,” he said.

Logan knew the rules. Maybe better than any other child in Wickhills. He knew his name, and though he didn’t yet know how _true_ it was, he knew better than to be honest about it.

“… You may call me Specs,” he said quietly.

“For your spectacles,” said Aster, “I like it. Why do you wear them?”

“To see,” said Logan dryly.

“What, you can’t without them?” said Aster incredulously.

“Not well,” said Logan, quite before he’d realized that telling a fae – even a pixie – such an obvious weakness was probably not all that smart of him.

“Odd,” said Aster indelicately, “I’ve never heard of a Green Man with bad eyes before,”

Logan paused, turning the words over in his mind. They weren’t fitting together quite right, like a puzzle he was missing a piece of.

Gently, he reached up and offered his hand to Aster, who seemed delighted as Logan pulled him out of his own hair and held Aster in front of his face.

“A what?” he asked.

Aster cocked his tiny head.

“A Green Man,” he said, “What, did you not know? You’re obviously not a pooka, silly,”

“Green Men are Seelie,” said Logan, confused.

Aster blinked at him, befuddled.

“… Specs,” he said slowly, “What do you think you _are?_”

What is the saying? A butterfly flaps its wings, and a hurricane rages on the other side of the Earth?

A pixie crossed a bridge, and the snow began to melt.

Logan learned magic in bursts and scattered lessons that looked more like play. Pixies and nixies and sprites of all kinds, one by two by three and a dozen – Aster was the first, the crack in the dam, and they came pouring forth like mountain spring-

_Didn’t even know-_

_He can’t even catch a sunbeam, how _could_ she-_

_We have to do something-_

_Isn’t he sweet? So kind and so polite-_

A family of nixies moved into the Sanders’ birdbath. Wildflowers started growing along the border of their yard and the woods. Some of them looked like they moved, sometimes – tiny pastel and jewel-toned faces blinking up at the kitchen window. Dot and Larry pretended not to notice, and watched Logan ever closer. Thomas didn’t pretend at all, and slept in his brother’s empty bed on full moons and wished and wished.

And when wishing felt like nothing, Thomas spoke quietly to still air of the room.

“If you are his friends,” he pleaded, “Please take care of him,”

Dot’s long-missing jewelry started turning up on the counter-tops and in her vanity drawers. Larry abandoned grading papers for the night with his eyes bloodshot and woke up to all of them neatly stacked and marked perfectly in red pen. In the summer a storm struck and the oak tree dropped half a dozen branches and not a single one hit the house or the fence.

Ms. Gage walked in the house one day and froze, looking at Dot in astonishment.

Dot shook her head.

No one said “brownies.” Nobody dared. There were no brownies in Wickhills. Invisible friends, good-natured roommates helping with the chores? There was no such thing.

Belief is a funny thing in a place like Wickhills. Sometimes kindness seems more fantastical than magic. Magic is always the easier of the two.

Logan still walked into the woods at sunset on every full moon like he was being dragged on a lead.

But he walked in other times, too. When the sunlight blinked through the trees and cast gold-and-green light across his face, and Spring pixies talked him through flowers and sunbeams, and then Summer nymphs stepped out of the trees to show him how to make the light _burn._

“You’ll never sunburn quite like a Summer,” said one, “But it might help you get away in a pinch,”

“From what?” asked Logan.

“From _them_,” said Aster.

“They aren’t like us,” said a sprite named Thistle. They leaned close, nearly falling off the dryads shoulder.

“Autumn dies, and Winter _is_ death,” said Thistle, “We just have to stay out of the way if we don’t want to _wilt,_”

Logan frowned; he was quiet for a long time.

“But…,” he started, “Spring overtakes Winter,”

“It’s not a game of rock-paper-scissor, Snowmelt,”

“Hey!” said Aster, flicking Thistle in the ear, “Don’t call him that,”

“No,” said Logan, “That- that is exactly my point,”

They all looked at him.

“Snow _melts,”_ said Logan, “Seasons are cyclical, that- that’s the entire point,”

“Maybe it used to be,” said the dryad gently, “Don’t think about it too much. It will only make you sad,”

“I am not sad,” said Logan.

She gave him a quizzical look.

“What are you feeling, if not sad?” she said, confused.

Logan frowned at the dirt.

“I am… not certain,” he muttered, prodding at the earth. Something was blooming in front of him, too small yet to identify.

“I think-”

Logan’s frown deepened.

“I think that I am angry, actually,”

If he’d been paying attention, he might have noticed the way every fae in the circle shuddered.

—

It started small. A glare here; a defiant expression there. Logan refusing to give up his seat at full moons, or ignoring Eirwen with a particularly obvious eye-roll, or loudly cutting off a knot of condescending Autumns with a pointed comment about _rot._

_Insolent,_ the Unseelie whispered. _Arrogant little sapling. Doesn’t know his place._

_Foolish, foolish,_ the Seelie hissed, _What are you doing, do you want to die, Snowmelt?_

In this story, Logan still could not warn his family. He could not protect them – not directly. Anything he offered they turned away, and most of the time they forgot he’d even done it.

He knew they couldn’t help it. It hurt anyway.

Logan was still raised by humans, still thought in human ways and valued human life, in a way that even the other Seelie, adoring and sneaking humans into mushroom circles for joy they never remembered, did not understand.

But this Logan knew the way to make the dirt give up secrets, knew how to whisper to the trees until they bent into the shape he wanted – this Logan snatched squirming pixies out of the grip of sharp-toothed cornies with a snarl, gathered Seelie in his little corner of the revels and surrounded them with roses and blackberry.

Knee-height – not high enough for walls. Thorns sharp as daggers.

No, not walls. _Threats._

Logan wasn’t really one for subtlety.

—

“_Wake up!_ Snowmelt,wake up!_ Now! _Get _up,_ bark-for-brains!”

Logan made an indignant noise, followed by a punched-out _oof_ of pain when something small and dense jumped on his stomach.

“What on Earth-”

“Berry?” Thomas mumbled, sitting up slightly.

The brownie sitting on Logan’s chest gave a twist of their hand, and Thomas fell back asleep instantly.

“_Hey!”_ snapped Logan.

“We’ve no time to talk around your curse,” spat the brownie, “Your boy – the one who hunts solitaries in the forest like an idiot,”

Logan sat bolt upright.

“_What about him?_”

(In this story, Logan didn’t think to correct the brownie on calling Roman “his.” Raised by humans or not, a fae is a fae. Things are yours or not yours, loved or not loved. This Logan, with nearly two years of letting himself _be_ fae in a way he never had before, understood this maybe better than either species.)

“He is on his way to the hanging tree,” said the brownie, “_Get up,_ and _start running,”_

This Logan still didn’t know Roman was a witch – Roman still didn’t either. Logan heard stories of the traitor-witch-turned-monster – but in both stories, the fae underestimated Trudi Fischer, who took on a burden that was not hers for a rescue she would never see.

Quiet loyalty, inconspicuous courage – these are not the kind of good deeds sung about in stories.

Logan ran, and he didn’t bother with shoes, and he didn’t try to avoid being seen the way Roman did. The following morning would greet him with muttering and even more sidelong glances than usual, other students just barely avoiding outright hostility, their parents’ voices in their ears – _pale and quick in the moonlight like a wraith, he didn’t even look human, he _isn’t_ human-_

It made no difference.

By the time Logan made it to the tree, Roman was already gone.

—

No fae had gotten close enough to tell Logan what Roman had bought, or what he’d traded away. None of them had dared to risk it, because the one thing they _could_ tell him was _who_ he’d bought it from.

It was days of tension after that, Logan snappish and _hurt_ and Roman withdrawn and cagey and Patton, poor Patton caught between them and wondering what on earth was wrong.

In this story, there was a new edge to Logan’s frustration, the faintest whisper of a _what-if_, because Roman didn’t _know_ about Logan’s curse, didn’t know he was bound to decline anything Logan offered him so _why-_

Why-

Why, if Roman had wanted something from the fae, had he not just _asked Logan?_

Standing in the middle of an unfamiliar gas station parking lot, Logan finally understood.

“You _idiot!_” he snapped. He felt like a stretched rubber band ready to snap, like he was a half-second away from strangling Roman or bursting into tears or kissing him for being so stupidly, _moronically_ noble.

“I- what?”

“This?” Logan demanded, “_This_ is what you bought, you absolutely infuriating_ jackass, _how _could you?”_

Roman just gaped.

“How- how did you know-?”

Patton, standing between them, turned to Roman in horror.

“Roman,” he said, voice shaking, “Roman, you- what did you do?”

Roman stared at them.

“I just-”

One of his hands rose up halfway, not quite reaching.

“I just wanted you to be happy,” he said weakly.

“And I want you to be _safe,_” said Logan wetly, “The fact that you don’t seem to understand they are _mutually inclusive_ is utterly baffling,”

They went home. They went to the clearing, and Roman told them what he’d done, and Patton cried and Logan bit his lip, aching to tell them anything that would help and knowing he _couldn’t_.

The deal was done – there was no warning for Logan to give anyway. There was no help he could offer that Roman wouldn’t reject immediately, and even though Logan knew it wouldn’t be of his own free will, he thought it might shatter him anyway.

In this story, Logan knew quite a bit about _exact words_ and _loopholes _and how to lie while saying nothing that wasn’t true. He saw the trick, and he avoided college campuses and did not say anything to anyone, least of all Roman.

That night, the moon was new, and Logan walked into the pitch-black woods and left a trail of poisonous monkshood and whole thickets of razor-thorned blackberry and roses red and dark as blood behind him. It was autumn, and only barely. Logan already felt it sapping him of light. It would only get worse until spring, nearly half a year away.

Logan didn’t care.

And even fading, he left a trail – sleepy pixies and dryads rousing from their half-dozes, Seelie pookas and curious gnomes, following him like a beacon.

And then he stood in the middle of them. They were his friends, inasmuch as fae made friends. But that certainly didn’t explain why they were following him.

“Where are you going?” asked one of them.

“To kill the king,” said Logan simply.

Muttering broke out among them.

“You can’t beat him,” hissed someone.

“You certainly can’t beat the _abomination_,” insisted another.

But it was Aster – Aster, who’d crossed the bridge, and changed so much, and would never know it – who asked the right question.

“Why?”

Logan looked directly at him, his pupils narrow with rage.

“The fae hunter is _mine_,” he said. Logan was more fae than he’d ever been, then, and yet just as human as always.

“The king will not take him from me,” he said simply.

More muttering. Whispers. _Maybes._

Seelie love the light. They love things that are pretty and things that are silly_,_ trinkets and baubles and toys and jokes and laughter. Small things.

But they also love the earth, and the trees, and the roots that grow deep between them. They loved the humans who were so polite, who left gifts of cream and sugar, even though the gifts felt more like pleas these days.

The Seelie had been stealing humans into their circles for a century, and plucking the memories away. Temporary happiness. Laughter, yes – but only briefly.

Under the moonless sky, Logan said, _He is mine._

And the Seelie answered.

_They are _ _ **ours.** _

—

Roman tried to withdraw, but Patton and Logan didn’t let him. Logan was always tired, half winter sickness and half spending his nights huddled with other Seelie, planning and plotting and _hoping_, because they were not outnumbered but Logan had not quite yet figured out whether or not they were outmatched.

When Logan fell asleep in English class for the third time in one week, Patton and Roman crammed him in between them in Patton’s truck and locked the doors.

“Please,” Patton begged, “What’s wrong? Just _tell_ us, we can help,”

“Patton,” said Logan softly.

“Come on,” said Roman, his voice joking and the smile not reaching his eyes, “You can’t have done anything worse than me, Specs,”

“Do not ask me this,” Logan whispered.

No one spoke.

What could he say? What could Logan tell them? Something that wasn’t a warning. Something they wouldn’t turn away.

“Trust me,” he pleaded.

Roman stared for a long moment. Patton reached across and took Logan’s hand.

“Okay,” said Patton, “I do,”

Logan squeezed Patton’s hand, and waited.

Slowly, Roman reached across and laid his own hand on top of their joined ones.

“I want you safe, too, you know?”

Logan nodded.

“I do,”

For the first time since he’d found out about it, Logan thought he might understand _why_ Roman had made the deal in the first place.

—

In both stories, the Snake Prince who played at being a king was arrogant and self-important. In both, he made the same mistake of thinking things like love and loyalty were weaknesses.

In this story, he had full moon after full moon of watching the banshee’s brat in the corner, far from the fire. First, alone and sullen, and then dressed up with dozens of pixies for jewelry and then surrounded by laughing, simpering Seelie. Durant did not see the hedge of thorns between them as a threat – or at least, not in the way it really was. Childish posturing, he thought. An infant Spring, playing at rebellion against his mother.

But arrogant or not, he was not _blind_ – Roman had given up seven years of his life for the changeling, and Durant had barely needed to convince him.

He did not value love; that didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of what it looked like.

In the other story, the Roman Gage who walked during the night was a trophy. In this one, he still was.

This Night-Roman walked the same path every night, to an out-of-the-way cottage that was just a touch too comfortable to be natural. He was a secret, a stolen trinket hoarded in a locked box. The solitaries who had learned to fear an iron dagger and slightly-too-small jean jacket weren’t clever enough to think to look for their missing enemy. Nobody dared ask the Serpent King where he stole off to in the evenings.

This May still found him, coming home from his silk-cushioned cell with a smile on his face. This Roman still fell, too hard and too fast, and it will still hurt, in the end.

Love is a curious thing. Sometimes it happens gradually – lonely children learning how to fit together over the course of years, or an old witch mourning the dead while fixing a grumpy changeling’s too-big tie.

Other times it happens quickly – a new mother holding a stranger’s abandoned baby and refusing to do it twice. A white thing, trapped and bleeding and waiting for death, clicked free by a shaking young boy.

The pooka called White was not the strongest, or the cleverest. At best she was overlooked – were she anything else but a Winter, she would have been long dead.

She could not talk to her Matty, or his Michelle. She could not help her sweet Patton, who cried and feared the sound of his own voice. She had asked, once, to go back to them. She had not done it twice.

But there were benefits to being overlooked. White fur on white snow, clouds invisible against gray sky. White had always been less _dark_ and more _air_ – she seemed to be the only one who understood that could be a strength.

White did not know the boy with green eyes, nor did she care to, then. But she knew he was Patton’s. So was the changeling, the one who collected Seelie around him like buzzing, colorful insects around a lantern.

Less dark – more air.

White could always tell when the wind was changing direction.

—

Running came naturally to Logan now. He thought of those years ago, running from the hunt, and could almost laugh at the way his twelve-year-old self had stumbled over even the smallest obstruction.

Almost.

In the other story, White went to Roman. She knew of the changeling, had watched him play with Patton for years from behind thickets and trees, but that Roman had been a knight – he’d had influence. More gentry friends than just the king he belonged to. The changeling in that story had none.

In this story, Roman was treated more pet than knight – which is actually true of both, but in this one, it was far more obvious. This Logan carried more weight in his words with each moon, more Seelie flocking to him every day like birds on a wire.

A Winter goblin plucked the wings off a Summer pixie too young to sunburn – he left the new moon revel and seemed to vanish into thin air. Most wild Summers and Springs, especially sprites, usually overwintered through the cold season, but now all but the youngest of them were still awake, bright and colorful and quietly defiant against the ice. Most cornies were Autumns, and they were used to the few Summers staying silent – but this was a different silence, this felt like _watching,_ and an Autumn spat _Seelie_ like it was an insult and his Summer brother smiled and said _Yes, I am,_ and they all heard the _threat_ behind it.

The Unseelie Court did not – quite – fear Snowmelt, or his growing army of angry overgrowth.

They _were_ starting to wonder if they _should_.

And in the other story, Roman recognized White and held his tongue and stayed his hand on his blade – he’d learned, in his time in the court, how sometimes it was better to wait, to pick the best time to strike.

This Logan learned things from the court as well. Different students can learn different lessons from the same teacher.

So this White went to Logan, and she nearly died for it.

It was still winter, but it was just barely waning by now. The thaw was on its way. Logan was getting stronger, and temper was always something he’d shared with Roman, even if they’d all been polite enough to pretend otherwise.

Logan knew Patton better than anyone else did, except perhaps Roman – and even then there were things Roman didn’t know, things that had nearly vanished when he’d joined them, quirks Patton had that had been confined to the space between, when Logan was all Patton had.

Roman had made them more stable – a table with three legs to stand on.

Before, there had been a desperation about Patton, some days. Times Logan had to watch closely, had to learn to _see_ discomfort in a way that did not and had never come naturally to him. Moments when Logan had been acutely aware that Patton would do anything for him, and that it was mostly out of love, but it was partly out of fear. Given the choice between “alone” and “uncomfortable,” Patton would always choose the latter.

In both stories, Logan hated White more than all the Wallers combined before he ever actually met her. In this story, he knew he could do something about it.

She had stepped out of the trees, and she’d been trapped before she could speak. She had been expecting it – white things learned very young what prey looks like, and that it looks like them.

“Give me one good reason not to kill you,” Logan snarled.

White held very still in the blackberry bush – she did not bleed, but only barely, the thorns pressed tight against her skin and just waiting for her to flinch so they could pierce through. White was very good at not flinching.

“I did not mean to hurt him,” she said.

“I don’t care,” spat Logan, “You did,”

“I know,” she replied, “I know many things. I can help you,”

“Help me what?” said Logan.

White did not smile very often. For Wallers – rarely anyone else. In both stories, they eventually learned not to be unsettled by the teeth, sharp and canine and shimmering, polished bone.

“I hate the snake as much as you do,” she said, in the tone most people use to comment on the weather, “I want him dead,”

Logan narrowed his eyes, suspicious.

“You are a Winter,” he said warily.

“Barely,” she said lightly. Maybe she had heard the petty nickname directed at Logan – or maybe she hadn’t. Either way, it was enough – Logan wasn’t a Winter, barely or not. And it didn’t take much to thaw the heart of a Spring.

White led Logan to the cottage, and showed him Roman’s cell, and Logan tried not to be hurt – he was keeping secrets, too, even if it wasn’t of his own free will. How could he hold the same against Roman?

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

He’d sent White away, for this. On the border between the woods and the Gage’s lawn, Roman froze, and he turned.

In this story, it hadn’t been quite as long. Months, not years. Not long enough for Roman to forget Logan’s face – only just barely long enough to forget the way his heart flipped every time he saw it.

“Because I didn’t know,” he answered.

If May Gage was surprised when Roman returned early in the morning with Logan’s hand held tight in his own, she hid it well. It didn’t go that different; a story shared with a cat and overheard by witches. A tale told about a spider-silk cloak.

“I can’t tell him,” said Roman, “It’s part of the deal, he can’t know,”

Logan picked a bit of lint off Roman’s shirt, and Roman heart stuttered.

“Repeat the exact wording, please,”

“I am forbidden from telling Day-Roman that I exist,”

Logan looked up, a small smile on his face.

“I am under no such compulsion,” he said.

He did not say “I will tell him.” He did not say “I make this choice for you,” or “This is what you should do.”

In this story, it hadn’t been nearly as long that Roman was stripped of the right to choose, but it had been long enough that he’d almost forgotten how. Some lessons you learn quick.

Logan waited.

“…Okay,” Roman said quietly, “Patton- tell Patton, too,”

Logan didn’t say anything when Patton picked him up for school the next morning. They went to Roman’s house next, and Roman walked out with a smile – brittle but real, as it had been for months, and Logan looked him in the eye and knew Roman did not remember.

They were both confused when Logan got out of the car.

“Whatcha doing, Lo?” said Patton curiously.

“We are ditching classes today,” he said simply.

Roman raised one brow.

“Let’s go to the clearing,” he said, “Bring Dizzy,”

Dizzy was already walking out the door, though. She looked up at Logan and Logan knew she was no cat – or at least, not only a cat – even if he couldn’t hear her speak.

Virgil laid still in the crystal, spun from tears and magic and blessings and wishes, and listened to Logan spill every secret like an upturned bag of poppy seeds and pick them up one at a time, turning them over and fitting them together with Logan’s shaking hands buried in tortoiseshell fur.

Logan told his own secrets, showed them blooming flowers and caught a morning sunbeam and managed to smile at Patton’s wide eyes. He told Roman’s, and then he waited for some of the color to come back to Roman’s face before he continued. He told White’s, and he reached for Patton’s hand and told a story about a steel trap from the other side, of _burn_ and _pierce_ and _loyalty _and the way White still limped when she thought nobody could see her.

He told May’s – though that one wasn’t really her secret. She’d inherited it, and she’d said no the first time. Abby took it, and Abby died. You aren’t supposed to inherit things back from your children, and you aren’t supposed to bury them, but sometimes the world is not fair. It was Greta’s secret, Trudi’s, Abby’s, Roman’s – but not May’s.

No, May still hadn’t told _her_ secret. She would, eventually – May’s part of the cloak was sized to fit Virgil, but she hadn’t made it for him. Everybody knew she sometimes saw her Abigail when she looked at Roman. Hardly anybody knew she sometimes saw herself when she looked at Logan, stubborn and caustically witty and too damn smart and nosy for his own good. And she could barely even admit in her own head that Patton, with his quiet courage and bottomless well of kindness sometimes made her miss her own mother like she was a ten-year-old with a fledgling bird hidden in the shed again.

In both stories, May wouldn’t learn to love Virgil until he woke up – after, she would sometimes feel bad about it, but Virgil never seemed to think it mattered. He kissed her cheek and called her _Oma_ and he never held it against her because, well, he’d threatened to kill his sister when he’d first met her, so he didn’t actually have a whole lot of room to talk about things like bad first impressions, did he?

But that didn’t mean May hadn’t woven the cloak with love at all.

But that secret came later. For these, Virgil listened, and he heard someone say his name for the first time in decades, and he did not sigh in relief. He heard someone say his sister’s name, and he did not cry; neither was for lack of trying.

But the three of them didn’t know Virgil was listening – not yet.

Years ago, Abigail Gage had said “A promise is a promise.” May told Roman. This Roman, the Roman of the day, didn’t remember, but he repeated it now anyway. Some things live deeper than memory.

“We’re gonna save you,” said Patton, his voice lovely and pleasing and charming. The magic stuck the best to orders, but everything Patton said carried weight in a way other people’s voices didn’t.

Roman had said something similar, the first time he’d seen Virgil. Virgil hadn’t believed it then. He was starting to, now.

He could feel their hands, warm through the crystal, and let himself hope one day he could hold them properly.

Logan passed messages to the Wallers, from White to him to Dizzy to Roman and done, and he grumbled about inefficient methods of communication. He properly introduced his parents and brother to the brownie living in their cupboards, a Summer who told the Sanders to call them Basil. Basil had two sisters, called Willow and Barley. Willow, a Spring, took up residence in the Wallers attic and took over playing middleman for White.

Barley was an Autumn. Dizzy caught her one day on top of the fridge – cats are ambush predators, after all – and dragged her down and pinned her on the counter, staring in silent threat. May didn’t react except to ask politely what she might call the brownie, and whether or not she ought to tell Dizzy to kill her.

“We are not all happy, like this,” said Barley, “Family is more important than- than politics, and petty dogma,”

That, at least, May could understand. Dizzy let Barley go, and she lived on top of the fridge and helped Dizzy catch pests and quietly tended the fire if May or Roman fell asleep without checking it.

Logan and Patton had every conversation with Roman twice. Spring approached, and none of them were getting enough sleep. This Night-Roman had no knight’s oath to a false king to break, and somehow it felt like a betrayal anyway. He tried not to think about it. It was easier to block out when Patton laced their fingers together, or when Roman laid his forehead on hundred-year-old crystal tears and remembered a promise inherited willingly, or when Logan muttered at Dizzy about tricking this Winter or jinxing that Autumn, surrounded by glittering pixies and looking up at Roman with snowmelt eyes.

“… Am I a terrorist?” said Logan, a little incredulously, looking up from the map in his hands. None of them could hear Virgil’s sisters laughing all around them. If Virgil could have he would have been right there with them – as it was he just added another tally to the “Reasons I’m Going To Kiss Him When I Get Out Of This Thing” list, of which there were three versions, one for each of them.

Patton hummed.

“I think, uh, _we_ might be terrorists, actually,” he said a little absently, lifting up a tiny leather vest closer to his eyes to get a better look at the stitching. Pixies generally relied on speed to avoid getting hit at all, but Patton figured it couldn’t hurt.

“We definitely are,” said Roman, shrugging, “Rebels sounds better though, try that,”

It was easiest for Roman in the day, obviously, when he never even thought it might be a choice. In the day he kept exactly one memory of the Serpent King, and it wasn’t a happy one; a kiss unasked for and unwanted. At night he only remembered that first kiss when Patton asked politely before so much as holding his hand.

In both stories, it was Roman who took the ring. In this one, it happened at night, after Roman’s head had hit the pillow, and after he had let Dee kiss him (Dee, _Dee,_ he gave you that and what are you doing with it?) and meant it as much as a traitor can mean anything. Logan and Patton had not _let _him do it, because Roman didn’t need their permission. Patton called him brave and Logan called him reckless and Roman smirked and said it usually looked the same either way.

It happened on the first day of spring, in a comfortable cell, surrounded by Seelie hidden in the forest around them and waiting, an ambush Roman had helped plan.

In this story, he did not change his mind at the last second, and he did not wake up. He slipped the ring off of Dee’s finger in his sleep and sprinted outside with the circle of bone clutched in his fist.

But in this story, Virgil was still sleeping. There was no one strong enough to shatter the bone shackle around Greta Fischer’s neck. There was still unfinished business, and she could not leave until it was done.

In this story, Durant woke up with a bare finger and thought “traitor,” thought “_mine_,” and he walked out into the night air and stared down an army. If he’d been paying closer attention, he might have thought he heard cracking ice.

“You’re mine,” he said, and Roman knew he couldn’t lie.

“No,” said Logan, stepping between them.

“He isn’t,” said Patton, standing next to him.

Belief is a funny thing, in a place like Wickhills. In the other story, White’s first lesson to Patton had been about the things we can carry and the things we drop when we can’t.

But in both stories, Patton’s voice was a siren’s but Patton himself was human as anything– and humans can do some strange and terrible things, when given a mind. Children and mothers lifting cars off of babies, adrenaline and hysterical strength and things no one has quite learned how to measure yet.

In this one, Patton had not yet learned what he was and was not strong enough to do. Sometimes _not_ knowing your limits makes all the difference.

“Give him _back_,” said Patton, and it did not sound like bird song so much as like something shattering, like a smashed jar of poppy seeds or chain link rattling until it snapped.

Love, too, is a curious thing. Sometimes it is soft and quiet and gentle. Sometimes it is sharp and quick as flashing razors. It is always stronger given freely than it is when it’s taken.

It did not put Roman back together. Not right away, anyway. There was no sudden tearing of the heavy curtain dividing the space inside him in half. Instead, Roman would fit back together piece by stubborn piece, one conversation and memory at a time. It would take a long time – but then it did in the other story, too, if in a slightly different way. This way was harder – but gentler, too. Maybe it was better, or maybe not.

It was not Greta Fischer who tore the Serpent King to pieces. She was still only a shadow, a moving scream, mourning and regret given a form and left to weep.

There were no Gentry among the Seelie that followed Logan. These Seelie, angry and hurting, were all wild – in the way fields of flowers and volunteer tomatoes are wild, but also in the way of summer storms and bears rousing in the spring from a long sleep – and they descended upon him, a swarm of locusts, a forest fire, all shriek and blaze and the kind of cruelty that only comes to those whose loved things have been taken from them. He fell, and he did not get up.

All of it, from the start to the finish, was Logan’s plan – because that _is_ what Logan does, is plan and schedule and delegate and what is war strategy, really, if not that, with blood and fight instead of binders and highlighters, a game of chess played with people as pieces?

What came after, though – that was not part of the plan.

There was a gap, a vacuum at the top of the court, and a prince still trapped, unable to fill it.

Logan had gathered Seelie around him because he was a bleeding heart, really, no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise – he’d made hedges between them and the dark and said _here is a safe place_ in the way he’d learned as a child, climbing into his brother’s bed when he had nightmares like Thomas’s blankets were a better shield than his own.

But this – this had been for Roman, and all the Seelie knew it. It had been for the humans of Wickhills for all of them – what did it matter that Snowmelt was thinking of one, specifically?

And so, Logan had never thought of what might come after.

“What do we do now?” said Aster; he was always crossing first.

They were all looking at him, and Logan didn’t know what to say.

Patton’s hands were still shaking when he laced his fingers through Logan’s. It would be weeks before he managed more than single-syllables again in the wake of his first deliberate order, but Patton had always been good at saying things silently. Roman pressed his forehead against Logan’s temple and waited, knowing he would agree to anything Logan said and do it willingly, with his eyes wide open and his hands steady as a metronome.

_I am not a leader,_ Logan thought, but that wasn’t really true anymore, was it? He had led them here, even if he hadn’t asked them to follow, the first time. He hadn’t even really thought about it – he’d only been thinking about getting Roman back, and everyone stepping in line to help had felt more like _relief_ than _responsibility._

Some people might have taken it as an earned right – Logan took it because they asked him to, and even then he only felt brave enough to do it with Roman and Patton close beside him.

Someone called Logan the Snowmelt Prince in front of him exactly once, and Logan corrected them because that, too, is what Logan does – correct people.

“I am an elected official,” he insisted.

“They have to call you something, Specs,” said Roman. Night, at the moment – Logan could tell from the tightly controlled way he flipped the coin in his hand, though Logan hadn’t noticed him go to sleep. Patton made a soft noise of agreement.

“Snowmelt by itself is sufficient,” Logan replied, and a small, vindictive part of him had even grown to be a bit amused by the way Winters shuddered when they said it.

“And I would rather they go back to calling me ‘that changeling’ before dealing with anybody attempting to address me with ‘your highness,’” said Logan, his voice dripping with disdain.

In the other story, it was years before Eirwen learned to be properly afraid of the Spring she called her son. She learned quicker, in this one, and made herself scarce and sneered at other Unseelie who came and asked her to _put in a good word-_

Fear, yes. But never quite respect. Certainly not enough to ask for forgiveness, and not enough stupidity to ask for anything like mercy. She still assumed Logan would come to kill her at the first opportunity. In this story, it took much longer for him to bother coming for her at all.

There was no Virgil, yet, to help Logan along in figuring out what is _true –_ the Spider Prince was sleeping still, waiting, but with more smiling in his soul every day. Roman told him about the cloak coming along nicely, and Patton about how tightly he was going to hug him the second he woke up and Logan muttered complaints about _governing, _goodness gracious, it is absolutely exhausting, I have no idea how you did it-

So no, not Virgil, in this one.

Nobody liked wearing the ring. They had to – if no one wore it the monster refused to be still, tearing down whole swaths of forest looking for what was stolen.

Logan felt it on his finger like a brand, radiating death and misery. At night Roman felt it screech _traitor_ and in the day he heard Greta rattling around in the background in his skull, because after all, someone had inherited that unfinished business. Patton touched it and knew now exactly how much of a _leash_ his voice could be and his stomach churned.

May put it on just once, for a moment, and handed it back Logan, and Logan could not have identified the emotion on her face if you held him at gunpoint. She did not offer again.

Dot could manage it, if she had a couple days’ warning. So could Larry, and he needed less warning but longer to recover. Matt and Shelley were always good at rolling with the punches, and what was taking turns babysitting an eldritch abomination if not one more punch? White came over for brunch and Patton’s lessons on Saturdays, and if any of the Wallers ever knew she plucked the nightmares out of their heads when they’d been wearing it a touch too long, they never said.

Thomas put it on more than anyone, even though everyone tried to avoid giving it to him. There was no schedule. They gave it up when they couldn’t stand it any longer and they took it when they could bear it.

But Thomas – Thomas _got it_, in a way not one of the others could understand. All of them had lost or almost lost people, but Thomas alone among them knew what it was like to have a best friend and know he didn’t really belong to you. Logan shared his face and his parents and his room but Thomas had laid in Logan’s empty bed moon after moon, night after night, and known that any day he might not come back. He’d spoken to the brownie in his house before he’d even been sure it was there, and said _take care of him,_ because Thomas was human and not magic and he’d spent his whole life taking care of Berry any way he could, but this was not one he could do himself.

_ **Where is he? Give him back. Where is my brother?** _

Thomas went to the little clearing Greta alternated between sleeping and screaming in (they all talked, round and round, about whether or not it was smart to let her into Virgil’s to see him, if it would help or hurt or make everything so much worse, and they never managed to come to enough consensus to do it) and Thomas sat at the edge and he told her all sorts of things. Useless, trivial things, small talk about the weather and the occasional snippet of petty gossip.

Mostly he told her good news, even if it was small, because she was so hurt and so sad and so angry and if Thomas could just give her one thing, one happy thing, one bit of news that broke through and let her know it was almost over (please, please, let it be almost over), or that there was still light, somewhere, even if she couldn’t see it, it would be worth it.

Everyone tried to keep track of him when he wore the ring, because if left to his own devices he would stay until his vision swam and his ears bled, and someone would have to wade through the screaming distortion charmed to the teeth and drag him away.

“She cannot hear you,” Logan hissed bitterly, “She is only a shadow. There’s nobody there anymore, and it doesn’t make _sense_ to hurt yourself for a- for a _memory-_”

“I have to,” said Thomas.

Logan frowned.

“Maybe she’s only a shadow,” said Thomas quietly, “But I can’t- I have to do something. _Something,_ Berry, I can’t- I _can’t_ just ignore her, don’t you _hear it_ when you wear the ring, she just _wails-_”

“An echo,” said Logan, pretending he didn’t hear the crack in his own voice, “A memory, Thomas, that is _all _she is,”

“If it was my memory, would you do nothing?” said Thomas, pointed in a way he usually wasn’t.

Logan’s frown deepened.

The next person to go and talk to Greta – or her memory, or her echo, whatever she was – was not Thomas. Logan sat at the edge of the clearing, and he was silent for a long time, listening to the shrieking and not blocking it out the way he always did.

_ **Give me back my brother.** _

“We are trying,” said Logan quietly.

He moved a sunbeam to shine on her and it sputtered out like a dying candle. He waved a shower into the air above her and the raindrops evaporated with angry sizzles before they ever touched her twisting, snarling form. He tried to give her flowers, something bright and pleasing to look at, and the only thing that he could get to bloom was asphodel, brittle and dry and wilting nearly as soon as it blossomed.

They came together, next time. Logan wearing the ring, but he’d never been even halfway decent at hiding things from his brother. Logan grew anything he could think of and it all bloomed asphodel, and Thomas told her good news and squeezed Logan’s hand until he left bright red crescents on his brother’s palm.

They stopped coming separately. They didn’t time the length of the visits – even Logan had trouble keeping track of the clock around Greta. Out of step with the world and out of sync with time, frozen for decades, totally unchanging unless she was getting _worse._ Time slipped between their fingers.

So they didn’t notice. They stayed as long as they could bear it, and never realized it was getting longer and longer every time.

_ **Where is he?** _

“Almost, Greta,” soothed Thomas, “Almost, I promise,”

Logan didn’t say anything. He called wallflowers and balm and chrysanthemum. Asphodel bloomed, every time.

Thomas switched back – he made a mildly pointed comment about Corbin and Sloane “finally getting their shit together, isn’t that nice, Berry?” and Logan rolled his eyes and looked up to cast another useless sunbeam over Greta’s form.

_ **Promise.** _

They both froze.

In the other story, Greta’s ghost was more Dragon than Witch, in the end – but she had been human-shaped, in the graveyard. She’d worn the face Virgil had known.

In this story, Greta still had unfinished business – she was not free, really. Not yet.

But a dragon? A monster? A pet on a leash, a baited bear? That, she was free of.

The thing looking at Logan and Thomas could not be called human. It could barely be called human-shaped.

But there was a face, even if it was stretched and distorted. There were eyes, and only two of them. It gave Thomas a headache to look at them, but they could, in the right light, be called the same dark brown that Virgil glamoured his own whenever he wanted to try and pass for mortal.

Greta promised to save her brother. She failed, and it trapped her in the space between life and death and drove her mad.

Thomas promised to give him back to her. Everyone in Wickhills knew better than to make promises to fae, but few had ever been warned not to make them to the dead.

_ **You promised.** _

“I did,” said Thomas faintly, “I do,”

Logan tried for an olive branch and it still didn’t work.

But it wasn’t asphodel. This time, it was snowdrops.

—

Greta followed them now. Thomas and Logan traded the ring back and forth between them, and the others stopped asking for it.

This was when Patton finally told the truth. The graveyard had always talked back, in its own quiet way, and Patton recognized that silence. Greta didn’t touch him – she knew things in patches, in bursts and snatches of memory, but she knew there was something wrong, that she was sick and it spread so she touched nobody at all – but Patton sometimes heard his name in a voice that was not familiar but felt like it should be.

In the other story, figuring out how to save-

(mercy, it was a _mercy_, and Patton chanted it under his breath for weeks after in both stories. It took about the same amount of time for him to believe it)

-How to save the bunny was an accident.

In this story, the ghost of Greta Fischer told him.

_ **I see him. Pinned, like a butterfly. Caught between. He is like me.** _

“Can I help you, too?” said Patton, when he had buried what little bones and fur they’d been able to salvage while Logan and Roman stood next to him, the way that always had, even when Patton was sure he didn’t deserve it.

_ **No. I am different.** _

Logan laughed, suddenly, and it didn’t quite sound like his own voice – layered, an echo of a girl with messy hair and skirts astray behind it.

_ **Bigger pins.** _

Roman snorted and Patton broke into slightly hysterical giggles and Logan made offended comments about Greta hijacking his vocal cords without permission.

She argued silently with Basil. She opened all the cupboard doors, and Basil shut them, and they went back and forth like that for hours some days – nights, too, and all the Sanders family learned to wear earplugs to bed or else deal with the banging of cabinets all night long.

Greta hated anything new. What she considered new varied between types of objects. The washer she tolerated, but the dryer made her shriek and bang on all the walls, even though they were a set bought at the same time. They started using the clothesline if whoever had the ring was home, or else temporarily kicking them out while someone did the laundry.

Sometimes the house smelled like smoke (which made Larry panic the first few times, looking for smoking outlets or forgotten oven mitts on the stove) and sometimes it smelled like very old perfume. Sometimes it smelled like very old perfume someone had used as a Molotov, and when the three of them complained about it to Virgil he thought to himself that was the most suitable one.

The house developed hot spots. Dot noticed them first, though she actually thought they were hot _flashes._ Thomas said something about how he thought ghosts ran cold, and Roman grinned and grabbed his wrist, his hand as warm as if he’d been holding it over a fire.

“Must be different for witches, I think,” Roman laughed, and Thomas laughed, too, and it was one of those laughs he wasn’t quite sure was his or Greta’s.

Greta laughed at lots of things Roman said. In both stories, Roman never managed to really think of Greta as a _grandmother,_ as someone he’d come from. In the other, his grandma’s grandma never managed to line up in his head with the monster they’d fought or the specter in the graveyard. In this one, it was hard to think of the wisp of smoke who knocked over glasses and scattered everyone’s shoes no matter how well they lined them up at the door as anything other than his slightly exasperating friend Greta, who just so happened to be a ghost. No big deal.

Greta did not laugh at things May said.

May came to the Sanders house after Greta showed up exactly once, and Greta had twisted and shrieked and turned nearly as inhuman as she’d been the very first time Logan had seen her. Every light bulb in the house blew, and the air went hot and thick. May fell to the floor, and she almost didn’t get back up.

Roman stayed with the Wallers while May recovered from her stroke; Patton drove him to the big city hospital every day, and when Dot and Larry went to visit Thomas passed along messages and Logan stayed behind with the ring.

_ **It was an accident.** _

Logan didn’t know if a ghost could lie. He wasn’t sure if he believed her, especially when he tried to get her to explain and the air went itchy and hot again and Logan remembered the way Ms. Gage’s face had gone half-slack and Roman so pale he was nearly gray.

_ **What would you do? My brother, my best friend, what would you do if she took Thomas from you?** _

“She would never,” said Logan.

_ **She already did.** _ _ **She did it to me.** _

In both stories, Logan did not remember the December night that took Abby Gage from all of them. He did not remember tiny Roman hugging even tinier Logan goodbye and kissing him on the cheek for what would be not the last time, but certainly the last for a very, very long while.

In both stories, Logan heard the story from his mother’s mouth, and in both, she didn’t tell him the full truth of it. In both, Logan remembered that Ms. Gage had not wanted him from the moment he entered his parents’ house, had spent nearly their whole childhoods keeping Roman far, far away from the changeling child her daughter had chosen over her, and he carried it like a lead weight for years.

But Logan also remembered there were exactly three houses in Wickhills with enough copper cookware to comfortably accommodate him, and the Gage household was one of them. He remembered that everything she cooked Ms. Gage made one portion separate that was just his – no salt. He remembered sitting next to her at picnics and trying very hard not to laugh when she made caustic comments about the neighbors, and trying very hard not to cry when she swore viciously at anyone who made disparaging comments about him in her earshot.

Logan remembered the spider-silk cloak, nearly finished – he’d gathered some of the thread for it himself by now, helping the process along, and he’d seen the way Ms. Gage carefully spun it into proper yarn and wrapped it around the spindle. He thought he knew what penance looked like.

“She learned,” he said thickly, “She learned to be better,”

The windows rattled.

“_Please. _You cannot hurt her again,” said Logan.

They rattled again. The ring burned on his finger.

_ **Will you order me then?** _

Logan swallowed.

“I do not want to do that,”

_ **That isn’t an answer.** _

All of which is to say.

In this story, nobody helped Logan understand who he was. Or at least, not directly. Logan learned all the same lessons from his parents and his brother about family and love and loyalty, but in this one he learned about Spring and flowers from shy, downtrodden pixies and about sunburns from dryads who were maybe just a touch afraid of him even before they actually showed him the trick. Logan faced down a king and every Unseelie behind him and said _You cannot have the people I love_ in both stories, but in this one he’d known he had a fair chance of winning when he said it.

This Logan knew a little more about names, and what made them true – Snowmelt never stuck, even though every fae in the forest called him that, because when Logan thought of himself he certainly never thought of winter first.

_You cannot have the people I love._

Even if that meant protecting them from each other.

“If I have to, I will,” he said quietly.

The house hadn’t been quiet since Greta had come home with the twins that first time. Now it was silent, and Logan tried desperately not to think of graves.

If this was who he was, Logan thought – this, choosing family, over and over again, even if maybe that family had made mistakes and even if those mistakes had hurt people in ways that were permanent, in ways that left scars – if this was it, well. Logan could live with that.

He knew who he was. In this story, he never even needed to go find Eirwen to cut that last, frayed thread – it simply melted away, like so much snow, and somewhere deep in the woods Eirwen understood she was well and truly alone.

Greta watched, silent, and she thought _Bruderspinne would have loved you._

And just behind it-

_Trudi would have sided with you. Scolded me for even implying you should choose. I miss her. I miss my Toby. I’m so tired of being angry. I want to go home._

She didn’t say it. That was one thing May _had_ inherited from her grandmother – neither of them ever had an easy time admitting they were wrong.

They made it through the following weeks as May recovered. Mostly. She still spoke slowly, after that, careful and deliberate in a way she hadn’t been before. Her hands never stopped shaking, and in this story, it was not May Gage who finished the cloak.

The cloak was no longer just the work of witches. Shelley fell asleep with a shuttle in her hand and White pulled it gently from her fingers, adjusted Shelley’s neck so she wouldn’t wake up with a crick, and covered her with a blanket. Larry twisted silk into yarn until his fingers blistered. Thomas was always on the lookout for the biggest spider webs and he didn’t shudder while he collected them, and he certainly didn’t tell Patton when he found them in places Patton frequented.

They made it through the summer, and then it became autumn and then winter, and Greta played at baited bear through both, made spooky noises and startled Unseelie by sneaking up on them and screeching in their ears.

(But never touching, never. Greta didn’t have a body. She hadn’t in decades. There was no reason for her skin to crawl with the wish that someone would just _hug her_, but she was _sick_, she was burning with it all the time, and she remembered, barely, what she’d been like before and the way it felt to char someone’s skin right along with her own. So no – never touching.)

Logan and Patton tried very hard to keep a straight face when she did this. Roman – and it was getting harder and harder for them to tell when he was Day and when he was Night – didn’t bother, laughed right in the Unseelie’s faces and asked them coyly how afraid they were of fire.

It made Logan want to kiss him – but then, most things Roman did made Logan want to kiss him, if he was being entirely honest. Patton would have agreed with him, if either one of them had been brave enough to say it out loud.

In the other story, the secrets helped. They kept that wall up until it boiled over completely, all at once.

In this one, it stayed at a low simmer. It felt less like _longing_, less like _hopeless_ and _never_ and _they couldn’t possibly-_

More like waiting. _Not yet.__Someday. Almost._

Roman finished the cloak. Every morning when he woke up and greeted Mamaw and waited for her slow response, he considered for the barest moment, refusing. Just to spite the ghost, spite Greta who knocked over glasses and opened all the cupboards and made Roman understand why they called them _restless__spirits_. Spite her for being petty and angry and out of control, for almost taking the one bit of blood Roman had left in the world. He believed Greta, when she said she hadn’t meant to do it, but then again he’d believed Dee the first time, too.

But Virgil didn’t deserve that. Maybe Greta didn’t either. And either way, every morning, Mamaw saw it in his face, and gripped his hand tight in her shaking one, and shook her head.

May knew better – you could live on spite, it’s true, but it wasn’t happy living.

Logan and Patton didn’t ask to come with Roman to the clearing, but they all three ended up there anyway.

In this story, Virgil did not wake up alone.

He still shattered with the glass. He still looked at the three of them with suspicion, still barely recognized their voices, but here he had his sisters chattering happily about _your friends, they did it, all of them together you have so __**many**__ friends our brother-_

Patton made good on his promise. When he rushed across the space between them before Roman or Logan could stop him and wrapped his arms around Virgil’s ribs, his arms barely shook.

In every story, Patton gives good hugs. Virgil remembered a snippet, a promise, and here Patton was, doing just what he’d said he would. Virgil tangled his fingers in Patton’s curls and all of them relaxed.

“You have to come with me,” said Logan.

“Where are we going?” Virgil asked.

“Home,”

Thomas was waiting in the grass, the ring heavy on his finger and Dizzy purring in his lap. Dot hung clothes on the line while Aster sat on her shoulder and caught the pins she dropped. Every light in the house was flickering, buzzing with nervous energy. Greta opened all the cabinets, and Basil shut them, and they did it again and again and somehow, Thomas was pretty sure this time there was no fighting involved.

They told Virgil, in the casket, what was waiting for him when he woke up, but he didn’t remember it now. And most of the time, it’s much harder to say sad things when you know the person can hear you.

So Virgil stepped onto the Sanders property, and whatever he was expecting it was not the guttering wraith that greeted him, blinking in and out from one side of Thomas to the other.

In both stories, Virgil was the first person to deliberately lay a hand on Greta Fischer in more than half a century.

In both stories, Greta cried and flickered and was fourteen again, because here, here was her big brother, the scariest thing in the dark and not even a little scary, not really – not if you saw him laughing. Not if he pulled you out of fire with his bare Winter hands like an absolute moron.

So Greta was fourteen and small in the way little siblings are always small for the older ones, because some things no one ever outgrows.

In both stories, Greta had opinions, and she shared them the way she shared everything with her brother – freely and without an ounce of subtlety.

“Oh my god, it’s absolutely obnoxious the way they moon over you,” she laughed wetly. Logan stared beseechingly at the sky and Patton turned bright pink and Roman knew he’d yet to find an exorcism that worked on Greta, but they did irritate her, so he ran over all the ones he knew in his head and wondered if he could manage a quick one to get her to stop talking.

“Really?” said Virgil, grinning over his shoulder and not quite able to stop his own face from flushing.

“Yeah, really, it’s disgusting,”

“Would you shut up, you self-important poltergeist?” Roman hissed.

“I had to sit through pining, _Bruderspinne_, actual real-life _pining_ like in a novel-”

“We are not _pining!_” said Roman shrilly. Patton had moved past pink into red, and Logan was glaring at Thomas for looking entirely too amused about the situation. Neither one of them tried to agree with Roman, because Patton didn’t like to lie on principle these days and Logan couldn’t.

“You _were_ pining and you know it,” she said, still half-laughing and silver tears that disappeared before they reached the ground dripping down her face.

“And don’t think I don’t _see_ you, you smitten bastard,” she said, turning on Virgil, “You’d better be nice to them. Especially Patton, he’s my favorite,”

Across the lawn, having barely looked up through this entire exchange, Dot snorted.

“Hey!” said Thomas. Logan only rolled his eyes.

“Patton is most people’s favorite,” he said reasonably, “There is no need to take offense,”

Thomas and Logan had gotten very good at the quick pass of the ring from one hand to another. Greta barely twitched when they did it, these days.

Virgil was slower. They all knew, of course, that the ring was bone, but Virgil was the only one who really thought _grave-robber_ when he put it on.

Greta flicked him in the ear.

In this story, she lingered. Not long – hours, where in the other story it had been bare minutes. Greta was still so tired, but here she was not quite so raw, not quite a wound fresh and gaping. Here, it was not quite the snipping of one last thread. More like pulling all the bobby pins out of her hair after staying at a party just a bit too long, until her head felt lighter one tug at a time.

“Logan likes jam,” she told him.

“I remember,” said Virgil, though he hadn’t until she said it.

“He and Thomas are easy to tell apart but don’t let it fool you – I haven’t actually figured out if they can read each other’s minds, but even if they _can’t_ it’s close enough anyway,”

“Sounds familiar,”

“And remind Patton not all cats are Desdemona, for the love of Eve and all her daughters, just because they’ve got those fancy inhalers now-”

“I will,” said Virgil, “I promise,”

“And _Roman_,” she exclaimed, “He’s an idiot, he’ll pick a fight whole miles out of his league if you take your eyes off him for a _second-_”

“A pattern with witches, I’ve noticed,” said Virgil dryly, and it only hurt horribly.

In this story, Greta stayed just long enough. She pulled out all her pins and used them to help Virgil put himself back together, because unfinished business must be _finished._ It was never really just about Virgil being awake.

Safe, more like. Whole. _Happy._

“They love you,” she told him.

“They don’t know me,”

“They know _too much_, and they _still_ love you,” she teased, “What, do you think I didn’t share all your most embarrassing escapades at the first opportunity?”

“Grettie, _tell me you didn’t,”_

“How dare you ask me to lie to my only brother’s face,” she said in mock-offense.

Virgil flicked her on the ear.

“You love them,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Well, you’ve apparently been talking shit about me to them for more than a year, so-”

“_Pining_,” she said flatly, “Pining_, Bruderspinne,_ it was _unbearable,”_

“But yes,” he said, “Pining- pining is… probably a good word to use. Both directions, I mean,”

Greta smiled. She was faint enough now that Virgil could see the unbent grass through her legs.

“Good. _Good._ Perfect. I’m sure you’re all going to get in massive amounts of trouble, but at least there’s enough of you to bail each other out. Someone has to take care of you,”

“Stop,” he croaked.

Her smile went a little sad.

“Stop telling me goodbye, you brat,” he continued.

Greta squeezed his hand, the one with the white ring, and Virgil wondered if she even noticed.

“Alright,” she said, “I won’t,”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. Their hair was the same shade of black, even if Greta’s was a lot more transparent, just then. Virgil used to wonder if it was chance or fate, that if someone didn’t know them at all, and wasn’t close enough to notice Virgil wasn’t mortal, the hair always made them think _siblings_ first anyway.

He used to, anyway. He’d long ago decided he didn’t really care.

They sat in the backyard of the house Greta haunted, and in this story, Greta did not need a push. She faded so slow that Virgil didn’t know how long his hand was empty before he noticed. Maybe it was better that way – maybe it was worse. In both stories, Virgil wished for the other option, so it is a little hard to tell.

Virgil stood up, and he brushed the dirt off himself and furrowed his brow in the way he always did when he was trying not to cry. The others didn’t recognize the expression yet, but they knew better than to leave anyone alone with their grief.

Roman didn’t quite know what he was expecting when he led Logan and Patton out of the back door, crossed the lawn and gently took Virgil by the wrist.

Roman definitely _wasn’t _expecting for Virgil to turn so quickly Roman’s head spun and kiss him breathless.

“Oh,” said Logan, in a very strange voice. Patton didn’t manage any actual words, but any of the other three would gladly have told you it was a lovely and pleasing noise, whatever it was.

But “oh,”just about covered it anyway, in Patton’s opinion. Roman pulled back – Virgil only loosened his grip just enough for Roman to turn and beam at the two of them behind him, and Patton figured if Virgil wasn’t going to let go, well, Patton would just have to invade his personal space a little, because Roman was not going to smile like that without Patton kissing him – it just wasn’t gonna happen.

Roman’s smile was even wider when they parted, and Virgil’s was too. Virgil cast his eyes over at Logan, who had stepped closer but only just, hesitating on the edge of the circle.

“So,” said Virgil, grinning slyly “I hear you usurped a regent, Snowmelt. Should I be worried?”

Logan scoffed.

“I usurped a usurper; I am fairly certain it cancels out,”

“I notice you didn’t answer about if I should be worried,”

Logan smiled, a little hesitant, his teeth just a bit too sharp for a human.

“Maybe,”

Virgil laughed, and Roman rolled his eyes, muttered about Good Neighbors and their _dramatics _as if he had any room to talk, and lunged to grab Logan by the tie. He dragged Logan toward them until he was close enough that Virgil could press the laugh right up against Logan’s still smiling lips and kiss him through the giggling.

Patton stood on tip-toe and Roman leaned down so they could kiss Logan on either cheek and Logan sputtered indignantly like he wasn’t leaning into the space between all of them and pressing his skin to theirs anywhere they touched.

Logan and Roman managed to particularly distract each other, and Patton reached up to pull on Virgil’s collar.

“Yeah, Pat?” said Virgil.

Patton wore a small pout, but his eyes were smiling.

“You haven’t kissed me,” he said sweetly.

Virgil couldn’t help the short laugh that snuck out of him.

“Are you feeling left out?”

Patton let out a put-upon sigh that Virgil could tell was completely fake.

“I guess _one _of us had to kiss you last,” he said long-suffering.

In both stories, Virgil kissed Patton that first time like he was cradling something precious – because he was, he _was,_ there was nothing more precious than this – and in both stories, the order doesn’t actually matter.

—

What do they say? A butterfly flaps its wings, and across the globe, a storm rages.

A stone drops in a pond, and the ripples spread wide and far and deep.

But maybe this story is more ripple than storm – after all, so many things changed, but so much was the same. The pond always goes still again.

This Roman never quite fit perfectly back together – the curtain tore, and it tattered, and it thinned, but it never truly went away.

But in both stories they all trusted him, day and night and the twilights in between.

This Logan they called the best and worst kind of Spring, and Winters learned to fear him before they learned to be polite.

But in both stories he was still not quite human and not quite fae – still the one person in the world who might really be both. And that was lonely, sometimes, yes – but it meant wider pool of potential friends, technically. He could live with the trade-off.

This Patton knew exactly what he was capable of before he ever spoke to White. He stared down a king and said _“Give him back,”_ and he had _meant_ it more than he had ever meant maybe anything in his life. He’d made his voice a chain before he ever learned it could be gentle, and he wouldn’t apologize for it. Not once.

But in both stories Patton learned to sing with his godmother’s lessons in his ears. It took longer, in this one – but maybe not as much as you would think. Patton could forgive nearly anything if it meant people he loved safe – all anybody had to do was remind him he could include himself in the forgiving.

This Virgil got a proper goodbye, and he thought it might have been kinder quick. But in both stories he would rather there be no goodbye at all. Everyone always does.

But endings are rarely so simple as happy ever after.

Even though this one does come pretty close.

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me over on tumblr at [@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors](tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [spark envy in your irises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25157383) by [theriveroflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight)


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